Little Egypt (Salt Modern Fiction) (24 page)

The tea cup rattled on its saucer as he stood swaying, undecided, on the landing.

‘I’ll pop up later,’ I said. ‘Bed for you.’

To my enormous relief he shrugged and followed me to the Blue Room, where I turned down the sheets and put the hot bottle where his feet would go. My eyes were darting round looking for the key so that I could lock him in. He’d never know; I’d unlock it before morning. But there was no sign of the key. He shucked off his outer clothes and in his long wool underwear collapsed onto the mattress. I pulled the covers up and as I tucked him in I was overcome with a convulsion of grief as I remembered all the times Mary had tucked me in
snug as a bug
, all those times, and now she was no
no, no, no
.

I doubled over as if someone had slammed me in the stomach. But
pull yourself together
she was saying, her voice lodged inside my head where it always was and where it has stayed. And I did pull myself together. I took a deep breath and straightened up and turned back to see that Victor was oblivious.

‘Drink up,’ I said and watched as he propped himself half upright to take a sip of tea, screwing up his face at the taste.

‘It’s a new blend Mary chose,’ I said. ‘Don’t you like it?’

‘It’s cold,’ is all he said, swigged the rest of it back and handed me the cup.

‘There,’ I said. ‘Now you’ll sleep the sleep of the just.’

‘Just what?’ he said with a weary smile. He yawned and lay down. ‘Night night, Icy.’

‘Night night,’ I said. ‘Bugs bite and so on.’

‘Indeed.’

I would have been curious to wait and see how long it took him to get to sleep, but I crept out and shut the door firmly behind me. The brandy and the drug would surely do the job of a key, and keep him there till we were finished.

28

T
HE NURSERY LIGHT
was poor and dim, draining everything of colour. I drew the curtains across the frosty black of the windows. Osi was kneeling by the corpse, trembling, his face grey. He looked almost elderly.

‘We wrap the head first,’ he said.

The body was messily sewn, with wiry stuffing poking between the stitches on her abdomen.

‘What’s that?’ I asked.

He nodded at his little armchair and I saw he’d pulled some of the horsehair stuffing out. ‘It should have been salt,’ he said.

‘Needs must,’ I said in Mary’s voice, and winced.

Her eyelids were held down with coins and her face was quite blank as if she had no opinion about what was happening to her. She was drained of any Maryness, but for the wild spring of her hair. I tried to get a brush through it but it was too snarled and I could not bear the thought that all the snagging and tugging would cause her pain.

‘Come on then,’ I said.

He knelt by her head and lifted it, quite tenderly, while I passed a ribbon of sheet underneath and wound it round.

‘Tighter,’ he said. ‘It must be firm.’ My instinct was to be gentle. I didn’t want to squash her nose, but I obeyed him and pulled it tight, finding myself grateful as the features flattened and disappeared. Together we wrapped the head until it was a blank wad of white, a landscape hidden under snow, and once that was done the task grew easier, except when it came to her hands.

I chose the thinnest sheeting, for the delicate business of wrapping the fingers – strong, scarred and so familiar they might as well have been my own. As I wrapped I remembered all the things they’d done: the stroking of hair, the patching of grazes, the drying of tears, the wiping of noses, the pinching of pie crust, the podding of peas, the loving of Gordon Jefferson – and perhaps of Mr Patey.

By the time we’d moved onto the legs and body I’d almost stopped thinking and we were working together in a smooth, efficient rhythm. Osi kept up a murmur of Egyptian spells and I kept my lips pressed together tight, concentrating on making Mary safe and neat. Between the layers, Osi slipped pictures of amulets to make Mary safe on her journey, a journey in which I was almost starting to believe.

I became so engrossed that I didn’t hear Victor moving about and it was too late to hide what we were doing when the door flew open.

‘Icy,’ he was saying, ‘where’s the –’ and then he stopped. He looked at the part-wrapped body on the floor and at Osi and at me. He took in the canopic jars and the pile of grave goods and the blood-stained rug.

‘It’s Mary,’ Osi said and I actually thought I saw the hairs rise on Victor’s head, as his eyes stretched wide and his hands went to his mouth and he began to scream.

‘Uncle Victor,’ I jumped up, my legs all cramped from kneeling for so long, and tried to get hold of him, but he flailed away from me. He would not stop screaming and staring so wide and hard that I thought his eyes would surely fall from their sockets. It was the scream from his nightmares, only now he was awake and what could be worse for his nerves than a waking nightmare? It seemed to wake me too from the strange lull I’d entered and all the energy ran out of me. I wondered feebly if I could get him back to bed and we could pretend it was all a dream, but that would be impossible.

‘Please, Victor,’ I said. ‘Please, come on, let’s get out of here.’

Eventually he calmed down enough to allow me to hold his arm and guide him out of the nursery. I shut the door behind us with my foot.

‘What have you done?’ he said. ‘I can’t believe my eyes, I . . .’ His head was doing the spastic jerk and his entire body shuddering. ‘
You
!’ He recoiled from my attempts to hold him, and ripped his arm away from me. ‘
You
Isis,
you
!’

‘You’re cold,’ I said, making my voice as level as possible. And I found that I was shivering too. Strange how I had been suspended from my own discomfort during the wrapping of Mary and I had lost track of time – hours must have passed. I ran to the Blue Room and fetched his medication, came back and handed him a pill. He stared at it, before he sighed and swallowed it in a dry gulp.

I started down the stairs. ‘Come on, Victor,’ I said. ‘If you’re not going back to bed, let’s get you a stiffener.’

He stood at the top of the stairs looking down with a dull space where his eyes should be, awful twitching spasms running through him. There was an animal stench of fear. ‘Come on,’ I urged and at last he did follow me down and into the kitchen. I poured a brandy and wrapped his coat round his shoulders. I fed the greedy stove, and then I knelt before him, held his hand and explained what had happened.

He listened quietly at first, but then the horror rose in him once more. ‘Blood and guts,’ he yelled. ‘But this is
here
.’ He waved his arm wildly. ‘Not in
here
.’ He punched himself on the side of his head so hard I thought he’d knock himself out.

‘Don’t.’ I grabbed his head and held it tight and looked into his eyes. ‘I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have seen it.’

‘Shouldn’t have
seen
it!’ He spat out a laugh.

‘What could I do, though?’ I said. ‘I thought if anyone saw her like that they’d think Osi killed her. I have to look after
him
.’

I let go of Victor and he folded in on himself, rocking and mumbling. Cleo was sitting by the door, eyeing him warily and when I opened it she fled into the scullery. Victor hadn’t touched the brandy and I took a sip of it myself and felt a calming as it ran hotly through me. I put a hand on his shoulder to let some of the calm stream down my arm and into him, and I do believe it soothed him, just a bit. It was four o’clock in the morning, I noticed. I had never been up at that time before.

‘Do you see?’ I said.

‘
Mary
,’ he murmured. ‘Lovely Mary.’

‘I
know
.’ I had to brace myself against a fresh flood of knowing that this was
real
: that that thing upstairs was really Mary.

‘Poor Mary. Poor
dear
Mary.’

‘Don’t.’ I took my hand away. ‘I can’t be properly sad, don’t you see? I can’t let myself be properly sad till it’s all over and dealt with.’

‘How hard you are,’ he said. And that is the cruellest thing that anyone has ever said to me. But I could not deny it. If being hard is keeping your emotions in control, keeping yourself under control, then I was hard. A softer person could not have endured my life.

‘Please go back to bed now,’ I urged. ‘Shall I bring you some warm milk?’

‘They might think it was me,’ he said. His eyes were too terrible to meet and I turned my back, pouring milk into a pan. I wanted something else to eat, bread and milk, which is what Mary would sometimes make when we were little – bread softened in warm milk with a little crunch of sugar. Eating something comforting and babyish would help, I thought, would help to carry me through the night.

‘They already suspect me of . . .’

‘But I’ve told the truth now. Soon as they get the letter they’ll know.’

‘There are other things,’ he said, so quietly I could hardly hear. ‘Misunderstandings with women. I will have some warm milk, Icy.’

‘Bread and milk?’

‘Evie will think it was me.’

‘No she won’t. No one will. Because no one will ever know.’

‘But Mary has gone.’

I cut a thick slice of bread. Soon I’d have to bake some more. That was good; something to hold onto, something wholesome I could do.

‘We can simply say she went away. She was never paid properly, after all. Nobody would blame her.’ I tore the bread into chunks and when the milk began to froth up the sides of the pan I poured it onto the slice and, nervy as I felt with Victor behind me, I watched mesmerized, as the bread softened and lost its edges. I sprinkled sugar on top and we ate in silence. The bread was clammy, sweet and simple, dissolving between my teeth, making Victor’s lips gleam white.

‘This was a treat for Mary when she was a girl,’ I said.

Victor put down his bowl and hid his head in his hand. His leg was going and his head.

‘Go back to bed,’ I said. ‘Try not to worry.’

He looked up and gave a wild and nasty sort of laugh.

‘
Please
go back to bed,’ I said.

He stood and stared at me and I found myself looking around for something I could hit him with if necessary, the coal shovel would be the thing, but then he sagged and nodded and turned and left the room.

Daylight was leaking round the edges of the curtains by the time we’d finished Mary. When every inch of her was wrapped carefully separate – each finger and toe – Osi bound her legs together, and her arms to her sides, and then we wrapped the whole in the sheet from Mary’s own bed, her final shroud.

‘Later I’ll decorate it and make the grave-mask,’ he said. ‘And you must make the shabtis.’

I stood up and tottered, a little giddy. I have always been someone who needs her sleep and it was the first time I’d ever stayed up all night. Osi looked dreadful, grey and drawn, and so like Evelyn, in the bony structure of his face, so like Victor, even in the cloudy absence in his eyes. And then I looked down at the tight white bundle that was Mary. She did not look so frightening or so cold now. Perhaps it was not a bad thing to have done. She did look, as Osi had said she would, complete.

We went to bed at the same time – we hadn’t done that for years. It meant I could turn the key and be sure to be safe from Victor. Without speaking, and for the first time in years, we climbed into the same bed to keep each other warm. I lay curled into the heat of him – our bodies slotted together like two parts of a puzzle, our womb shape – and I lay listening to him breathing, and snoring because of his cold, and I pretended we were babies again, tucked snug in our cot by Mary, and in that way I drifted off to sleep.

29

I
SLEPT TILL NOON.
Beside me was the neat impression of Osi’s head on the pillow. It seemed oddly light. In a daze I went to the window and parted the curtains. The sky was a pure, pale blue and the sun was shining. There was no frost, the snow had fallen away from the window, and the view was clear.

And then I remembered what had happened.

‘You are so hard,’ Victor had said.

I looked down at my hands, the fingers chafed from all the wrapping. In the bathroom I splashed my face with chilly water and watched the drips run down the hardness of my cheeks. I saw a woman not a girl, and not a pretty one. The roundness was falling away revealing not the swan I had hoped for but a perfectly plain duck. Plain and hard. The curse had started and I knew how to deal with it and I would have to deal with it myself. More blood, more rags.

Victor was already in the kitchen and the kettle was rising to a boil. His face was bleared with stubble – and in fact I don’t think I ever saw him cleanly shaven again. The crinkled mix of fox and grey softened his mouth and the thin jut of his jaw, but was ugly beside the scar, the shiny puckered rasher shape, where no hair grew.

‘Where will you put her?’ was his greeting.

‘Good morning,’ I said. The bowls from our bread and milk were still on the table, dried and crusty. I didn’t know whether to prepare breakfast or go straight on to lunch.

‘I’ve been thinking. It might be possible to get away with it,’ he said, in a flat, dead voice.

I pressed my palms on the table and spoke without quite meeting his eye. ‘She got in a right old tizz about her pay and upped and left. Bags and baggage and all. And who can blame her?’

He looked at me queerly. ‘I do wish you wouldn’t ape her speech like that.’

‘Well it’s her as brought us up,’ I said.

The kettle squealed. I tipped out the old leaves and made a fresh pot. There was scant tea in the caddy. I would have to learn to pay attention to such things. More coal, too. Victor could go to the village and enquire about that.

‘The icehouse.’ I eased the felted old cosy down over the handle and spout of the pot. ‘That’s where he puts his other . . .’ I didn’t know how to put it. ‘His birds and kittens and so on.’

He considered. ‘And if anyone comes looking you can say she went off in the night. You didn’t hear a thing. I wasn’t even here.’

‘It’s more or less what I already told Mr Burgess.’

‘Does she have a beau? Anyone who might come looking?’

‘She did,’ I said, ‘but she fell out with him.’

‘Good. What about her family?’

‘Just a sister in Bristol. And she’s poorly,’ I said and then remembered that was not the truth but my lie to Mr Burgess. I must keep things straight. The milk in the jug, left too near the stove, had curdled. I went and fetched the last of the fresher milk from the pantry, and as I passed him, saw the effort with which Victor was pressing down on his leg, knuckles fisted white.

‘When Evelyn and Arthur get back, they’ll know what to do,’ I said. ‘And they will come back,’ I reassured us. ‘They should have the telegram by now. And Mary can stay in the icehouse till then, at least.’ I watched the tea leaves clump together in the strainer as I poured.

Victor banged his hand down on the table so hard it made me jump. ‘I’ve just thought – they won’t get the bally letter before the telegram! If they hare straight back they’ll miss it.’

He was right. I had already thought it and hoped he wouldn’t. I kept my voice soothing as I said, ‘Well, as soon as they get back, I’ll tell them. Better face to face, anyway. I’ll tell them it was all a mistake in that bally tomb. Some kind of delerium or something, I was feverish after all. I’ll tell them you are blameless, make them see it. I
promise
. ‘

Victor stared at his tea for a long moment before he took a sip.

‘They
will
come back, won’t they?’ I said.

As his eyes met mine, they flinched. ‘Of course they will,’ he said.

Victor drove to the village to order coal and fetch some groceries from Mr Burgess.

I’d gone through the pantry, deciding all we’d need for the next few weeks and making a long list. I wanted to feel secure that whatever happened next we’d at least have plenty to eat. I thought seeing Victor in person would reassure Mr Burgess and stop him quibbling about the account. And Victor could make a business of fussing about how Mary had gone and left us in the lurch, in case the grocer was still suspicious.

I made some shabtis by drawing faces on clothes pegs and wrapping them in scraps of tea towel. I made six and then forced myself to go upstairs to the nursery. I hadn’t seen Osi all morning and didn’t want to. I never wanted to go in that room again. I found him kneeling staring down at the dog’s dinner he’d made of painting Mary’s shroud.

‘It’s difficult to paint on cloth,’ he said. ‘It’s supposed to be her.’

‘It’s good,’ I lied, looking at the dabs and smears, and handed him the shabtis. He glanced at them and nodded. From the toybox I unearthed my old doll Madeleine, with her shabby china face and flaccid limbs. She looked a hopeless type – not liable to be much use to Mary in the Afterlife, but Osi said we should still put her in. There was a tin pony and a leather camel, both of which we added to the pile of grave goods.

‘I wish we had a sarcophagus,’ he said. ‘Something wooden or stone that I could paint properly.’

‘Well, we haven’t,’ I said.

He stood up and with his fists rubbed yellow smudges round his eyes. ‘She must begin her journey as soon as possible.’

‘It’s nearly over, Osi,’ I said and reached out to put my arms round him. It was strange and awful to feel his thinness, his exhausted quivering, and breathe the stench of blood and paint.

I had thought that making him complete the process was the right thing to do. That it would be good for him.

But I don’t think he ever got over what he’d done.

Between us we struggled her downstairs. She wasn’t heavy. Osi held her head and I her feet. He was muttering prayers or spells all the way through the kitchen and out and down the garden, through the orchard where I stumbled and we almost dropped her. Resting for a moment under the plum tree, I looked up through the winter branches at the thin blue of the sky and noticed the first swelling of the leaf buds. It seemed unbelievable that nature was going on as if nothing had happened, that the seasons would turn as usual.

We carried her down the steps to the icehouse and gentled her onto the ground outside the door. He took a key from his pocket, unlocked the padlock and swung open the door.

‘How will we get her down there?’ I stepped in and peered into the darkness of the ice pit. The black, musty stink of the place got in my nostrils and made my heart beat fast, wings of panic fluttering at the edges of my vision. I stepped out quickly, tripping over Mary in my haste to breathe fresh clean air.

‘Mind out,’ Osi said, breaking from his Egyptian muttering. ‘Will you go and fetch the grave goods and the jars?’

Gratefully, I hurried away towards the house. The thunder of a train reminded me that this was just a day among other days. I didn’t know what day it was. When the train went past, it had meant that Mary would be preparing luncheon. She would be in the kitchen making a soup. I stopped and let my head fall back to stare into the clear, pure blue above me and felt dizzied by the depth of it as if I could fall upwards and away, plummet through all that blue.

It took three trips to bring the things we were sending along with Mary and though I didn’t believe in the journey, still I went into our parents’ room and took a pair of jet earrings from Evelyn’s jewellery box and a silk nightdress from her wardrobe. Evelyn didn’t much care about such things and would understand. She would want Mary to have them. The worst things to carry were the jars that held bits of her innards. They were stoppered earthenware kitchen jars labelled
raisins, tea, and sugar
in Mary’s own neat hand and smeared now with her blood.

I put the jars and all the things outside the icehouse. I could hear Osi inside muttering his incantations and I ran away. I could not be there when he put her down into the cavern of the icehouse. I should have helped but I was sickened by the close dark space, and the harshness of the Egyptian words that seemed to whisper and breed in that dankness. And I was sickened by Osi, by myself, just sickened to my soul.

I went to swing on the gate as if I was a child again, waiting for the distraction of a car. I was hoping for Victor, but the road was quiet. Nobody would be calling me for lunch or telling me to wash my hands or to change my frock. Victor would want something to eat when he got back, unless he stayed in the village. He liked the pub, where they made their own pork pies – and I expect he liked the landlady, too.

I went out of the sun into the kitchen, such a mess of dirty plates and dishes, Cleo winding round my feet and crying for her food. How Mary had managed for all those years, all alone, to keep it warm and tidy, to keep us well fed and in clean clothes, I do not know. Now I picked one of her aprons from the back of a chair and tied it round my middle. The floor was in need of a sweep and a mop. The table was strewn with crumbs and cat hairs and streaks of dried-on food. I was overcome with a wave of helplessness thinking of the filth in the nursery, the growing mounds of laundry – though there were hardly any sheets left to wash, at least – all the dirt and mess swelling and growing, and I understood so well, so much too late, Mary’s crossness. In fact, I thought it a wonder she was ever cheerful at all, with all she had to do and then me on top, pestering her for company, for games of cards, for
love
.

There was hot water from the stove and I grated soap into the bowl and set to washing up every plate and bowl and cup we’d used. Osi came in and stood staring at the empty table.

‘All done?’ I said.

He nodded and met my eyes for just one bleak moment.

‘I gave her Bastet,’ he said.

‘Good.’ I wiped my hands on my apron in a Mary gesture and fetched bread and jam for us. I was hungry too and must make more bread, must think of a meal to cook for later – Victor was supposed to be bringing back fish, milk, sugar, cheese, chops, butter, and Mr Burgess would deliver the rest on Monday as usual . . . my mind went sliding along the tracks Mary had left. And she had even found time to make us cakes. Arthur often said she was a wonder, and he was right, and again I almost doubled over with the sudden punch of missing her. I had to keep my mind away from the slight and shrouded thing we’d carried down the garden, and from the silver padlock, big as a bath bun, locked now and that would stay forever locked.

‘Ma and Pa will be back before you know it,’ I said, and though we never called them that, it felt the right thing to say and he nodded as if comforted. We ate our little lunch in silence and then Osi went upstairs to sleep. I felt sleepy too and allowed myself five minutes with my feet up beside the stove, before I got out the bowl and prepared to make the bread.

I
SAT AMONGST THE
flattened shrubs by my poor Osi for I don’t know how long, hearing the ebb and flow of traffic roar, the important racket of the trains. A blackbird came and sang his song, and I could hear its beauty though it didn’t touch me. Other birds arrived, a silly chitter of them, and a chaffinch landed on Osi’s arm. What would the birdies do when they brought in their bulldozers and all? Whatever would my spudgies do?